Logie's Summer

24th April: At 8.25am, Logie was standing firmly in her nest, scanning the skies for her mate. His job is to catch fish and bring them to the nest; her task is to protect the nest and, once she has laid eggs in a week or so, to carry out the bulk of incubation, while the male catches fish. It will take another day or two to be certain all is normal. The intruder female has been seen off but she has spent a week hoping to claim this nest and mate, and now she has to go off and find a new place - a metal ring (and no colour ring) suggests to me she is an older osprey who may have lost a mate, or who may have been waiting for her mate to return. Hopefully the latter, as yesterday saw more ospreys arriving in Scotland in what is a very late spring arrival. If I find her nesting, I will include that news in this log.

29th April: Logie has been within 400 metres of her nest ever since she pushed out the other female; all seems settled, there has been more nest building and today at 8.30 am Logie was standing in the nest, and  at 10.45am, she was eating a trout on a perch near the nest; the male was standing in the nest with a full crop (he would have eaten the front half of the fish). Later, she flew to nest with tail end which the male took to a branch to eat, and Logie perched beside him. She needs to feed up in order to produce her clutch of eggs.

12th May.  All progressing normally at the nest. At 1pm today we checked the nest, using our usual technique for osprey monitoring: a mirror on top of an extendable aluminium pole. This scientific study is carried out very carefully under licence from Scottish Natural Heritage.  When we arrived, the male was incubating, and Logie was eating the remains of a fish - from the size of her crop she had already eaten much of it. At this time of the year, the male does all the hunting and brings one, sometimes two, fish a day to the nest. He eats the first half, including the head, usually on a perch near the eyrie tree; then he flies to the eyrie with the fish for the female and she takes the rest of the fish to a favourite perch to eat, while the male starts his turn at incubation.

We found that Logie had laid a full clutch of three eggs. As we departed, the male bird returned to the nest to incubate, and Logie went to finish her fish.  Earlier, I had checked a new nest which a friend had found a few miles away. There the male bird was also incubating and the female was eating a fish.  I need to go back and check from a distance with a high powered telescope to see if the birds are ringed - this is possibly a new nest occupied by the female ousted by Logie on 23rd April.

12th June: I watched the nest early this morning and Logie's behaviour had changed - she was sitting higher in the nest, and occasionally poking around in the nest. At 8.06 am the male returned with a small fish and came straight to the nest instead of eating some first. Logie carefully moved out of the nest cup to the edge and gently walked round to take the fish. She ate some bits herself and then fed very tiny pieces to a chick(s) in the bottom of the nest. Using a high power telescope I could see her gently feeding but the chick(s) was well hidden and it will be many days before we will know how many eggs hatched. Now we need good weather, without heavy rain, so that they survive.  Great news that she has young.

8th July: Logie has two growing chicks and now they are quite visible over the edge of the nest, and starting to stretch their young wings. Recent days have been difficult weather for fishing and the male will have found it harder to catch fish in rainy and foggy conditions, with cold wind. Earlier in June, the days had been dry and sunny, perfect for young ospreys, as shown by this photo of Logie and her mate at the nest one evening.

24th July. This afternoon, a perfect summer's day, I went to Logie's nest and with a team of helpers and a ladder the two chicks were taken to the ground. I weighed and measured them, and then fitted a Solar GPS transmitter to each chick. The young ospreys were in excellent condition, weighing 1446 and 1448 grams, they are both males.

There was no sign of a dud egg, so either the third egg was broken or the 3rd egg hatched and that chick died early on. The last three days have been lovely weather, but earlier in late June and July there were many days of rain and cold weather, but Logie kept her young dry and warm, and the male brought in enough fish for the chicks to grow.  They still have about ten days in the nest, before fledging. Hopefully, they will successful complete their post-fledging phase, when they are fed by the male, and once they start to migrate in September, each chick will have it's own migration page. And also by then a name chosen by the Logie school children.

As we left the male flew in and perched above the nest, carrying a flounder caught in Findhorn Bay.  

2nd August.  I went and checked the nest late morning. Logie was perched on the topmost branch of the dead Scots pine,  while her mate was perched low down in the same tree. Both chicks were lying quietly out of view in the eyrie. They had probably been recently fed and the whole family was quiet.

About ten minutes later, one chick stretched a wing and then stood up, followed by the other. The biggest chick started beating its wings, practising for flight, and then took off and hovered a few feet above the nest for several minutes, before collapsing back on to the eyrie. Then both chicks sat down again. Young Ben Money, the son of family friends who were with me got this photo of the chicks, with his digital camera hand held on my Swarovski telescope.